[ILUG] Bandwidth friendly IMAP client.

[Gareth Eason]

	   Hi,

	YEs - there are still parts missing from Thunderbird, especially in the 
'mobility' / GSM connectivity type featuresets that you;re looking at.

	I also find this a pain, but then I remember that it's not a finsihed 
product - a point I tried to make clear in my last mail :-)

	It's also free, looks the same on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X (the 
three platforms where I predominantly check my mail) and works very very 
well if you have decent connectivity in the main, and only need to 
connect via GSM (say) for short periods to make sure that mails are kept 
up to date while on the road.

	I'm hoping that a selective checking system (such as Outlook's mobile 
mail tools) will add the features you mentioned - and that with the 
click of a button, I'll be able to tell Thunderbird that I'm now on a 
mobile connection - so stop checking for mail unless I specifically 
request it - and do NOT download anything beyond headers, unless I 
specifically request it.

	My Thunderbird is currently at 0.7.3 - still a LONG way from 1.0 :-) 
Outlook has been around a lot longer, is aimed at a different market 
(originally) and has caused me more trouble over the years than I care 
to remember. I use it at work because the shared calender functionality 
is excellent. Pity about the e-mail functionality though :-)

	In conclusion, Thunderbird is my mail client of choice - though I do 
sometimes just have to leave my GSM connection saturated while it does 
it's thing. It's not perfect yet - but feed back to the development team 
with your feature requests and there's a very good chance they'll be 
there for 1.0 - or even before :-)

	Usual disclaimers apply, YMMV, etc. :-)

	Best regards,
	-->Gar


Lisa Muir wrote:
> Thanks guys for your feedback..... BUT.....
> 
> On Mon, 06 Sep 2004 20:43:40 +0100, Gareth Eason <bigbro at skynet.ie> wrote:
> 
>>      Hi,
>>
>>   Thunderbird will quite happily download and store messages locally,
>>if you select to make the folders available offline. It does NOT do this
>>by default.
>>
>>   Just go to 'Tools' | 'Account Settings...' and the 'Offline & Disk
>>Space' section will allow you to set which folders you wish to make
>>available 'locally' (which means a locally cached copy is synchronised
>>when the server is available.) I think this is the behaviour you're
>>looking for.
> 
> 
> Saw this, but it breaks the IMAP protocol because it doesnt allow me
> to view the sender and subject before giving me the option of
> downloading the message, it just blindly downloads ALL the messages.
> Thats pop my friend, not IMAP.
> 
> 
>>Niall O Broin wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>On 6 Sep 2004, at 18:22, Lisa Muir wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Can anyone recommend a bandwidth friendly IMAP client for linux?
>>>>
>>>>It seems that KMail and Thunderbird don't cache downloaded messages,
>>>>so after I view the 2Mb solicited marketing message, poof, its gone
>>>>once I stop viewing it, and I have to download it all over again
>>>>everytime I want to refer to it.
>>>
>>>
>>>I believe that the latest KMail, as delivered with KDE 3.3, does
>>>support disconnected IMAP folders. I haven't used it yet, so I can't
>>>comment on how well it works.
> 
> 
> Yeah, I saw this too, and couldnt for the life of me work out how to
> switch it on. Revisited it yesterday after your message and discovered
> that you have to set this at the time of creating the IMAP account in
> Kmail, and select "diconnected imap" as the server type.
> 
> So I promptly deleted my IMAP server settings, and created a
> disconnected IMAP account, and voilla, lost my inbox, and then in a
> repition of what Firefox does, it goes off and does a POP of my
> maildirs. The inbox would probably be recoverable after it downloaded
> all the subscribed mail folders contents, but I must have 600 megs up
> on the server at the moment and while its nice to have access to it
> when I need it, I ain't downloading all that crap to every workstation
> that I move around to.
> 
> Alas, it turns out that Microsoft are the only show in town when it
> comes to IMAP clients. I can grab someones desk, setup my IMAP
> account, pin point messages that I want to download, have them and
> only them available offline, dump the local copy if needbe. Its a road
> warriers dream. Had hoped there was something else out there to fill
> the void for linux. Its either webimap or microsoft for a professional
> solution it seems with the webimap being less than professional as it
> doesnt really client side cache large attachments.
> 
> Thanks anyway for the help,
> 
> Lisa.